Johanna Garth is the author of The Persephone Campbell Series; a modern take on the myth of Hades and Persephone. Johanna lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two children.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Bang With Friends

Match.com, Jdate and eHarmony all came on the scene after I met and married my husband.

In retrospect we met the old-fashioned way. The abbreviated version of that story is a friend was clerking at his office. I picked her up for lunch and he picked me up for dinner a few days later.

All that is to say, I don't have any experience with internet dating. In theory, I'm all for people meeting each other and finding love, but the latest entry on the internet scene leaves me a little...well...let me just tell you about it.

Bang With Friends is an app designed for heterosexual use that claims to allow users to anonymously hook up with their Facebook friends. It's tagline reads "Your friends will never know you're interested unless they are too!"

Before I continue, I should probably give you a little insight into the way my brain works.

Pollyanna and I have a lot in common. In fifth grade I was the one who insisted the song lyric was "darn" instead of "damn" because they would "never play swear words on the radio." Those people who hung out behind my high school and looked like they were high. They weren't really using drugs. They probably just didn't get a good night's sleep.

I wish I could say that naivety was a product of a bygone decade, but my first thought after reading about Bang With Friends was, "How interesting. It must be for drummers."

Don't laugh.

Okay, never mind, you can laugh.

After I realized the target market was wider than the musically inclined I was plagued with a plethora of giggle-inducing questions.

Will there be a next generation app that follows Bang With Friends? Since they've already started their brand maybe it'll be Bang with Friends of Friends or Bang with the Unfriended.

Will there be a Like option for app users?

What happens when Facebook glitches and "accidentally" publishes all the hook ups (is that what they're called? I don't even know) to user's timeline where great-aunts and high school english teachers can comment?

Is it just me or does Bang With Friends seem like the virtual equivalent of a college fraternity party? I can already hear the app users complaining (via anonymous message board of course), "Dude, where are all the girls?"

And maybe that's exactly what Bang With Friends is, a next generation college fraternity party. Even though it seems incomprehensible to me (quite honestly I'm still working hard to convince myself it's not really about drumming) maybe this is part of what it means to be twenty-something in 2013.

20 comments:

So true! I am so out of it I didn't even know such a thing existed. This could be a useful app though, as one never knows when a good drummer will come in handy! I could have used one just the other day.

This post just made me SO glad I ditched my FB account a few weeks ago.

I am the same way as you, and most of the time The Husband has to explain what stuff really means. Like the time I got called a "MILF" but some 20 something kid. At first, I thought I spilled milk on my shirt because I didn't hear him right... Um, yeah. I'm that bad.

These things rarely go over my head anymore. If you knew me in very early college I would have been oblivious. Then I started working for a renaissance festival, there was no room for being naive anymore.

Still it doesn't surprise me that this app exists. There have been websites for anonymous booty calls for years, it was only a matter of time before they made an app and narrowed it down to your friends in social media and not random strangers.

I think the potential to be wildly embarrassing is huge. Aside from the inevitable leak to your wall where everyone knows that you are trying to secretly hook up with friends and who you did so with, there is the general fact that I don't want to know if my friends think that way about me. Besides the fact that I am married, even if I was single...my friends list would probably not be my dating pool.

Okay, forgive me, but I not only laughed at you, but laughed out loud and fell off my chair, oh my naive friend. And here I was TOTALLY thinking this was prime innuendo but actually something else, only to learn I'd nailed it (see how I did that? nailed it?)

I am CRACKING UP. What sort of nuts hooks up with FRIENDS? They are entirely missing the point of hooking up! *shifty*

But seriously... yeah, totally a disaster waiting to happen... hook up goes badly and hooky then OUTS YOU for all your facebook friends. Come to think of it, there is a murder mystery in here.

oh my gosh, Bang With Friends?!!How trashy is that? I remember the good old days before match.com and all these online dating and social media sites too. I have nothing against online dating sites, but Bang With Friends?! lol There really is an app for everything I guess.

I haven't tried Jdate (cuz I'm Catholic, not Jewish), but I have tried match.com and eharmony. But I will NEVER try Bang Your Friends. I'm not even on Facebook, and that app just gives me another reason not to join. What I'm looking for is a loving relationship, not a one-night stand. I like the story of how you and your husband met. It's sweet. :)

I'm with Alex, sooo glad not to be on Facebook. I mean, this app could be so much cuter if they just called it "secret crush" or something a little less nasty. Oh, and I love how you describe hooking up w/your husband :)